|
Brzezinski calls for Iraq pull out
By KATHERINE GYPSON
UPI Correspondent
03/17/06 WASHINGTON, March 16 (UPI)
-- One of America's most
respected elder national security statesmen called for a full
pull-out from Iraq Thursday.
Delivering the keynote address at the Center for American Progress'
"Iraq; Next Steps for U.S. Policy," Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former
National Security advisor for President Jimmy Carter, said that
"within a year we should be able to complete a course of
disengagement" and withdraw from Iraq.
Brzezinski cited several reasons for withdrawal, among them the
"prohibitively expensive" cost of the war and the fact that American
leadership and legitimacy has been severely undermined by the
insurgency and damaged credibility.
"We have to make a really cold judgement," said Brzezinski. "Would
the consequence of civil war be more devastating than the
consequences of staying the course?"
Iraqi Shiites and Kurds might prevail in a civil war, Brzezinski
said.
"The U.S. umbrella that is designed to prevent these wars is so
porous it ends up feeding them," he said.
It would take a U.S. commitment of half a million troops to make a
significant difference in fighting the Iraqi insurgency, Brzezinski
said. But, "We are not in a position to do this," he said.
Brzezinski also called for a new U.S. nuclear dialogue with Iran. A
precedent for one already existed in the Bush administration's
multi-lateral talks with North Korea on nuclear proliferation, he
said.
"Surely it cannot be our deliberate intention to fuse Iranian
nationalism with Iranian fundamentalism?" he said.
Brzezinski said that however long the U.S. military occupation of
Iraq lasted, it was doomed to failure.
"In a war of attrition," he said, "a foreign occupier is always at a
disadvantage. This is a failed occupation."
Brzezinski said Iraq had not yet collapsed into a full-scale civil
war. Far from preventing such a war from breaking out, he said, the
continued U.S. military occupation made one far more likely.
"This is not yet a civil war, in the sense that it is not yet a
comprehensive, nation-wide collision between Shiites and Sunnis but
we are unintentionally feeding it," he said.
Brzezinski suggested that the United States "ask Iraqi leaders to
ask us to leave" and suggested that those Iraqi politicians who have
expressed a desire for American forces to continue the occupation
are exercising poor leadership.
"We are acting as though the Iraqis are our colonial wards," he
said. "We are teaching them about democracy by arresting them,
bombing them, by humiliating them and also helping them. It is an
ambivalent course in democracy."
Brzezinski also said the president had failed to provide any serious
national leadership to back up his commitment to the Iraq war and
had failed to call the American people to the spirit of duty and
sacrifice needed to win any real war.
"What bothers me is the packaging," Brzezinski said. He said that if
the United States were truly engaged in war, then there would need
to for a national mobilization involving a tax on the rich, an
overall war tax and a draft. "These actions," he said, "are the
basic consequences of serious engagement."
Brzezinski also hit out at President George W. Bush's newly released
National Security Strategy. He called it "an erroneous version of
reality."
Brzezinski urged Bush to widen his circle of advisors. "Words have
consequences," he said. "The deliberate misuse of words can be
dangerous and a fundamentally altered version of reality can lead to
a fear-driven nation."
Other speakers at the CAP meeting called the bombing of a Shiite
mosque in Samara "a turning point for Iraq" and recommended a shift
in U.S. priorities from institution-building to a peace process
similar to the Dayton accords which sought a resolution for the
Bosnia conflict in the nineteen-nineties.
Jonathan Morrow, a lawyer who worked to rebuild legal institutions
in the country after the U.S. invasion said "Iraq was dealt with as
a post-conflict crisis, which is quite ironic actually because the
conflict was just beginning."
"The Iraqi Constitution -- for all its flaws -- is an authentic
version of what Iraqis want," he said. "Iraq looks like a lot less
of a disaster if you accept that there will be a loosely central
government and if you focus on peace-building rather than
nation-building or institution-building."
"The model is not difficult," Morrow said, "to bring all the players
to the table, to build a consensus version of what peace should look
like in Iraq. One of the key questions is to find someone who
authentically speaks for the Sunni Arabs."
Jonathan Finer, Baghdad Correspondent for the Washington Post, said
the influence of Iran in Iraq was hard to overstate, particularly in
the case of Iranian Shiite clerics whose voice he called "a
significant force" in Iraqi politics.
Morrow said, "We cannot expect to succeed in Iraq without involving
the regional players - and that means involving Iran. You cannot
pursue conflicting policies. But there do have to be priorities and
that doesn't necessarily mean sacrificing security interests."
© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
Click below to read or post comment's on this article
(In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes.
Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the
originator of this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
